


Drowning Man

by CorviDeus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergence, Lucifer's Cage, M/M, Sam and Lucifer Netflix and chill, Season/Series 11, dream visitation, i did the best i could with my little roll of duct tape, post 11x10, referenced canon violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorviDeus/pseuds/CorviDeus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m not the bad guy here, Sammy, I’m the guy pulling you from a burning building, even if I have to drag you from it kicking and screaming."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel doesn’t answer Dean’s text asking to meet up at a road stop they both know for dinner on the way back to the bunker. It's unusual for him; Sam thinks the phone might be some sort of substitute for his angel radio instant messaging, but Cas is tired and driving, so neither brother thinks too much of it.

 

He doesn’t arrive until long after the Winchesters, and Dean makes a joke about using Angel Radio as a GPS to avoid getting lost. Castiel frowns slightly, almost in that particular way the brothers haven’t seen in over a year, since Metatron had kidnapped Cas.  
It seems off, somehow.

Sam dismisses the oddities as Castiel being exhausted from fighting Amara and Lucifer in the same day. He knows their seraph friend is more hurt than he’s letting on, he has the quiet, withdrawn look he gets when he’s injured, and he’s glancing around the bunker like he’s never seen it before.

It’s for that reason Sam makes the offer, though it oversteps the boundaries they’d wordlessly set a few weeks ago.

 

"Cas, you can stay in my room if you want. You were only a third of the way through the X-Files, right?"

 

Castiel nods, hesitantly, face blank like Sam had started speaking Elvish at him (though thanks to Metatron Castiel might speak Elvish now, for all Sam knows), and after a second moves to follow Sam.

 

Sam thinks the angel might be even more out of it than he’d realized and when they get to his room, he switches the TV on and sets up Netflix for Castiel, who is staring at Sam expectantly, before going to the bathroom to change.

 

Dressed in his loose sleep shirt, Sam comes back into the room to find Castiel looking around the same alien way he had earlier in the library and kitchen.  
Three times is a pattern, but Sam is too tired to think about it, so he shuts off the distant alarm bells and hits play on Castiel’s episode for him before falling into bed and letting sleep take him, dimly aware of the angel taking his usual seat beside the bed.

There’s someone beside Sam in the bed when he wakes up, only there’s not, because he’s not awake, and this was something he never thought he’d be doing again. Not for a second does Sam entertain the idea that Castiel crawled into the bed with him, but when he rolls over, condescending dismissal on the tip of his tongue, a flash of deep blue catches his eye. It’s gone, almost immediately, replaced by a different, paler color, but Sam knows what he saw.  
Lucifer is reclining against the bed in Sam’s dreamscape, this one matching the bed Sam’s actually sleeping in, the one in the Bunker, rather than some random motel room as the dream furniture of the past was taken from.

 

The brief confusion, what he’d thought he’d seen, had thrown Sam off, so instead of the carefully formulated dismissal of whatever ridiculous sympathy plea Lucifer is about to come out with, the hunter simply says "You went back to the Cage." There’s a note of surprise in his voice, of accusation.

 

Lucifer just smiles, shrugs. "Why would that matter, Sammy? I told you already; the Cage is damaged. I’ve been in your head, all along. For months now. Those broken walls can’t keep me away from you, bunk buddy. Not anymore. Never again."

 

Sam’s heart falls, because he hadn’t considered that, had somehow convinced himself it was over, Lucifer wouldn’t bother him anymore, the way it had been for five whole years, sans a little rough patch in the middle. He’d forgotten, in the aftermath of his day in the temporary cell, Lucifer's revelation. The how of it had seemed a little unimportant while Sam was in the mock-Cage.

 

He’d wanted to forget.

 

This Lucifer was different than the one Sam remembered. He didn’t know what had caused the change- Sam’s abandonment of him, Gabriel's death and the lingering guilt, Michael's silent, accusatory stares and violent, stormy rages, the hundreds, thousands, of years in Hell without even the distant promise of freedom that had been Lucifer’s only consolation the first time around.

 

But this was not his Lucifer.

Not anymore.

 

Sam rolled over, so his back was to Lucifer, and heard the angel growl slightly in response. The advantage of talking in dreamscapes had always been the even footing it afforded Sam; Lucifer couldn’t hurt Sam here, not without waking him up. Sam had no need to fear a repeat of what had happened in the temporary cell earlier, though his thoughts kept returning to it like a lost tooth, a cork on a tie.

 

Lucifer seemed to be waiting, and Sam knew he wouldn’t be let out of the dream without at least acknowledging him again.

 

"What do you want? I can’t open the Cage again for you, I don’t know how and I can’t get to Rowena, anyway, even if you could still convince me to come back after what you did. You may as well leave me alone." Sam finally said after a few long, awkward minutes made it clear Lucifer wasn’t just going to give up and go away.

 

Sam closed his eyes as he felt fingers drifting through his hair, tugging lightly on some of the strands. It was freshly cut, not really long enough for Lucifer to play with properly, and he could feel the Archangel’s annoyance. He’d developed a strange fascination with Sam’s hair in the Cage, and more than once the human had woken up to tiny, delicate braids woven into it.

 

Sam cut off that train of thought right there. Remembering the Cage, the trust, the intimacy they’d shared wouldn’t help him now. For hundreds of years Sam had believed Lucifer loved him.  
The second the Devil needed something from Sam again his pretty mask had fallen away.

 

"You don’t know what Amara does to sweet little souls like you, Sam," Lucifer was saying.

 

The hunter gritted his teeth, tried to ignore Lucifer's playful tone. "She was released six months ago, not yesterday," he spits back. "She eats souls. It's not exactly breaking news."

 

Lucifer hummed and looked at the ceiling, touching the index finger of his left hand to his vessel's lips, and Sam hated how easily he could read that body language. Lucifer was telling Sam he was half-right.  
He hated that he’d turned back to face Lucifer, acknowledged the Archangel, again, despite his best intentions.

 

"I swore I would never hurt you, Sam." Lucifer says, still looking away. 

 

Sam bites back his bitter, angry retort. He’s sure the scene of their last meeting is replaying in Lucifer’s head, too.

 

"And yet I would tear you to pieces with my bare hands and listen to your screams with a smile on my face if the alternative was letting Her near you. I would break every promise I’ve ever made to you, I would become the monster I’ve tried not to be for your sake, and I would never regret it. I would still be protecting you, My Sam.

 

I’m not the bad guy here, Sammy, I’m the guy pulling you from a burning building, even if I have to drag you from it kicking and screaming, even if I have to beat you until you stop fighting me. If you let me in, let me save you, we’ll both make it through this. But only then."

 

There were no apologies, no direct acknowledgement of promises broken, trust lost. Sam knew Lucifer well enough to know there never would be; the Archangel’s pride was all he had left and he clung to it like a drowning man to a rock.  
All there was between them was a return to something like a shadow of the truce they’d once had, for long, long centuries, and an understanding.

 

Something was different now. Sam could feel it. Cracks in the walls or not, Lucifer hadn’t been able to sustain the line of communication from the Cage for more than a few minutes at a time, up until now.  
Either they’d damaged the cage further by messing around with it, or something else had gone wrong.

 

But Winchesters were world class experts at sticking their heads in the sand, and Sam was no exception.

 

The uneasy, fragile peace would hold for now.

 

Later, when all their options had been exhausted, when they were left beaten and bloody and at death’s door once again, Sam would look back on this moment, this early warning, and curse himself.  
But not tonight.  
For tonight, he could pretend.

 

"You know, Rowena might have been the only one who could let me out, but I was the one who told her how," Lucifer says conversationally. He’s finished playing with Sam’s hair and now simply weaves his fingers through it, patting the human’s head like he’s a dog.  
It’s probably meant to be comforting, and once upon a time it would have been. Once upon a time Sam wouldn’t have made that analogy. He would have moved closer to the touch, relaxed into it. Part of Sam, the part that remembered the truth even while his broken memories were trying to kill him, the part that rejected and denied what had happened that day, still wanted to lean into the Archangel's borrowed hand. The hunter squashes it down as he always has.

 

Sam rolls out of Lucifer’s reach, again, and glares up at him.

 

"No," he repeats himself, again. He’d never had to tell his angel no to anything more than twice, since the Apocalypse, and Lucifer hadn’t had a choice but to keep asking, back then.

Lucifer pouts, childish as Sam remembers, and raises a hand towards Sam’s face. Sam scrambles back, out of his reach-

 

 

-And falls out of the bed.

 

The hunter’s back hits the cold stone floor with a thud and he curses loudly. Castiel stares down at Sam, a mildly amused expression on his face, and that too strikes a discordant note- Cas would be concerned, he’s not in character- but Sam’s brain is too tired, too distracted by his disappointment at seeing Lucifer again, at the knowledge that there’s never going to be a way to cut the devil out of his dreams again.

 

It’s a revelation Sam thinks he’s going to panic over later.

 

"Are you okay, Sam?" Castiel asks, too late, too casual, but Sam’s conscious brain isn’t taking note.

 

He squints up at the angel in the darkness of his room- the screen has gone to sleep, and without even the dim glow of the television Sam can barely make out Castiel’s figure.

 

"Fine. Just a bad dream. You can get back to whatever you’re watching, Cas, you didn't wake me up," Sam yawns as he climbs back into bed.

 

His brain doesn’t make the connection. The room is dark. Castiel isn't watching anything.

 

There are no more dreams, that night, though Sam could swear when he wakes up that he’d felt hands in his hair, on his face, half a dozen times before morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly Lucifer is going to blow his cover if he doesn't do something exactly like this. Sam knows Lucifer can contact him from the Cage. As far as Sam knows, there is absolutely no reason his visions should have stopped. So Luci is going to have to go playing in Sam's head if he wants to keep up the charade.  
> I did my best with ambiguous wording to keep Lucifer from actually lying; as long as Sam makes assumptions and Lucifer just doesn't deny them, it's fine, right?
> 
> And as for the scene where Lucifer beats Sam up, yeah this is how I'm trying to justify it; Lucifer needs Sam to let him in right now or Amara is going to do something far worse than torture him; in Lucifer's point of view he's helping Sam, he's going to save Sam even if Sam won't allow himself to be saved. He's just... communicating the concept poorly.  
> It's a thin, pale hope but I am going down with this gorram ship.
> 
> Not entirely sure if I'm going to continue this; I wrote most of the first draft as a kneejerk reaction to 11x10 because I was a tad upset.  
> So I guess it depends what the rest of the season holds.  
> I'll mark it as complete for now but it won't necessarily stay that way.  
> Let me know what you think?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely getting more chapters because HOLY CRAP I thought Lucifer was OOC in 11x09 and 10 and those two eps were literally nothing next to 11x14  
> And shout out to AO3 for deleting my formatting so many times I think it took longer to get the formatting done than the actual fic.

After the night in Sam's room, Castiel makes himself scarce.  
So does Lucifer, for that matter. Sam’s dreams are calmer, more soothing than they’ve been in months, and though he suspects the occasional dream of being held, his hair played with, is Lucifer’s doing, he can ignore it as long as the archangel doesn’t confront him directly.

 

The one thing Sam’s dreading is telling Dean about the dreams. But he has to, by his own new rule about honesty. Dean will never be honest with Sam if Sam doesn’t start first.

 

It takes him four days; only because Dean cuts him off whenever he brings up Lucifer, insists that it’s over now and Sam can stop worrying. Finally, Sam gets sick of being talked over and shouts the truth at his brother.

Dean collapses into the armchair behind him.

“Fuck, Sammy, I didn’t realize…” he says.

Sam shrugs, looking at the floor.  
There’s not really anything more to say.

 

An hour later, after giving Dean enough time to calm down, Sam ventures out of his room again in search of the leftover Chinese food from two nights ago. Finding the fridge empty, he walks to Dean’s room to ask if he wants a pizza, and sees his brother, sitting on the edge of the bed, talking into his clasped hands.

"Cas, please, call me back, we need you here, man-"

Sam walks away as quietly as he can and decides to just pick up a pizza for Dean anyway.

 

That night, Lucifer appears in his dreams again.

"I thought you were leaving me alone," Sam says with a huff.

The devil smiles and stretches out on Sam’s bed.  
Sam wonders if it’s that he knows Lucifer better now, or if it’s just that he’s dreaming up his own bed, his own room now instead of a random motel room, but this time, the dreams seem more intimate, in a way that scares him.

"I’m giving you space, but I’m not giving up on you. We still need each other, Sam," he says.

Sam sighs. "So you’re just going to sit here and stare at me until I agree to help you?" he asks bitterly.

The hunter makes the mistake of glancing up at Lucifer’s face. He’s wearing the earnest, kicked puppy look that Sam suspects Lucifer learned from him. In the cage, that look always made Sam’s resistance crumble.  
There were no stakes, in the cage. No reason to resist, other than pride.  
Out here, it’s different, and Sam hates that fact with all of his being. Hates that he and Lucifer have to be on opposite sides, again.

His memories have been clearing up, recently, the jumbled mess left behind when his wall was knocked over seems more navigable.  
Sam’s almost sure now that he was wrong when he’d thought Lucifer had tortured him in Hell.

But it’s too late. Sam had ripped their bond to shreds while he’d been hallucinating and Lucifer doesn’t forgive, even if Sam hadn't known what he was doing. It’s Sam’s fault they’re broken.

There's no more conversation that night, though Lucifer stays with Sam for hours. Neither of them know where to begin anymore.

 

Sam’s cleaning his guns when Dean tells him about the case. He doesn’t really know why, except he does, and he doesn’t want to- _“you know where to aim, cowboy”_ \- and the distraction is welcome.

 

Castiel drops in while they’re gone. He leaves before they return. 

 

“Cas… If you can hear me, man, I’m sorry, for all of it, I really am, and please, come back. Dean needs you. We both need you with us. You’re a part of this team, you always have been, Cas…. Amen, I guess.”

 

Castiel doesn’t come back. Lucifer does.

 

"Do you know I don’t actually get any rest when you do this? No wonder the most vivid thing I hallucinated was you depriving me of sleep, it’s one thing you actually did," Sam snaps when he wakes up in his dream.

Lucifer blinks, owlishly, obviously having no idea what Sam was talking about. He covers it up after barely a second but it’s too late.

Sam narrows his eyes. "What, you know everything else that happened while you were down there, but not that? Or did you just decide reminding me of that year wouldn’t help convince me to let you in, so it wasn’t worth looking into?"

Now Sam is sure Lucifer doesn't know, and the tiny voice inside him that still mourns their bond is almost relieved. If Lucifer doesn’t know then his actions over the last few months have been a response to hurt, rather than simply because he doesn’t care.  
If Lucifer doesn't know about the hallucinations then Sam betrayed him, and not the other way around, and that makes it easier for Sam. Blaming himself has always been easy. 

Lucifer folds his arms and glares at Sam. He’s trying to look intimidating to cover the fact that he’s stalling. Broken bond or not, thousands of years together gave Sam an excellent handle on Lucifer’s body language.

Sam doesn’t know if he wants Lucifer to know about the hallucinations. But he has a right to. He as a right to know why Sam rejected him, because at the moment he must just think Sam was using him in the Cage and dumped him the moment he was free.  
Lucifer must think Sam never loved him, and Sam had never wanted that.

“Just look. The first year and a half after Death took my soul away.”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase it because the reminder makes Lucifer snarl at him.

“Lucifer. Please.” And for some reason, the archangel listens to him.

The cold hand on his face is familiar and comforting, just like it had been a week ago in his vision, and Sam wants to lean into it, but he can’t.  
Lucifer doesn’t bring Sam with him into his subconscious this time, but he can still feel the memories being examined. Can feel through the tattered connection the slowly dawning horror.  
After he’s done with the hallucinations, Lucifer moves on to Sam’s Cage memories, and his anguish cuts into Sam like a knife. The human shrinks back unconsciously from Lucifer’s hand and it tightens, pulls his head in closer, and then Lucifer is pulling back out, stares at Sam for a moment, speechless, eyes full of mixed sorrow and rage.  
And then he vanishes. 

Without Lucifer to hold it together Sam’s dreamscape crumbles, and he sinks back into true sleep. 

 

Sam wakes up, once, from a dream of fire and chains, unsurprisingly, and there’s a figure standing at the foot of his bed. Sam thinks Lucifer came back to his dream, and he opens his mouth, and the figure vanishes. The hunter dismisses it as another nightmare and drifts back into unconsciousness.

 

In the morning, Sam, on his third cup of coffee, hears a loud, frantic banging on the bunker door.  
He opens it to find Castiel, ragged and desperate, eyes wild.

"About time," Sam tells him, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so excited for 11x14 and now I'm just...  
> Ugh.  
> Most of this was written before it aired, but I wanted to wait for the episode because I was still thinking canon was going to leave me enough wriggle room to work this fic around it.  
> Apparently not.  
> So here you go.  
> Let's celebrate our ship being set on fire and exploded with some hardcore denial.  
> Also what happened to all the fuss about Mark Pellegrino being back this week...? I was really looking forward to that :(
> 
> I still don't understand how Lucifer knew everything that happened to Sam while he was in the Cage so I'm going with "Rowena told him the basics of what she knew, based on what Crowley told her, and Lucifer looked into the memories in Sam's head that he already knew about. And Crowley wasn't around while Sam was hallucinating, so that particular info might never have made it back to either of them.


End file.
